To follow up on a breach mentioned previously on this site, the Information Commissioner’s Office has found that Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust breached the Data Protection Act (DPA) after the loss of 112 patient records from the Intensive Care Unit of New Cross Hospital’s Heart and Lung Unit. The unencrypted patient records were on…
Category: Health Data
Ie: Fax leak of patient details 'not an isolated incident'
While there was widespread concern at news last week that confidential patient details had mistakenly been sent from Sligo General Hospital to a private fax in Donegal, it has since emerged that this was not an isolated incident. According to the Sligo Weekender, the newspaper has also received faxes with patient details from the hospital,…
Cardiologist who misused patient info for fraud sentenced
Sushil Sheth, M.D., a Chicago area cardiologist who surrendered his medical license, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for stealing approximately $13 million from Medicare and more than 30 other public and private health care insurance programs over roughly five years. According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Sheth…
UK: Hospital bosses told to improve security
Hospital bosses in Wolverhampton have been told to tighten up security in areas where patients’ charts are stored after a computer disk containing almost 800 confidential patient files was found at a city bus stop. The recommendation was made to New Cross hospital bosses by the Information Commission following an investigation into the security breach…
Details of 7,000 Cook County patients may be on stolen hospital laptop
It is troubling that within the span of a few hours, I am having to cover two stolen laptops containing unencrypted patient information as well as Social Security numbers. In this case, Carlos Sadovi reports: A laptop computer containing sensitive information about 7,000 patients of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System was reported stolen…
Laptop stolen from U Kentucky had info on newborns and mothers
From the University of Kentucky: The University of Kentucky is notifying 2,027 people of a breach of protected health information. Between June 18 and June 21, 2010, a laptop computer containing information from the Newborn Screening Program was stolen from the Department of Pediatrics Newborn Screening Program. The theft was reported to the UK Police…